Without Honors: Navy Fires Captain for Lewd Vids

Say goodnight to Captain Owen Honors. The Navy fired him Tuesday afternoon over the lewd comedy videos made by the commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise when he was its executive officer several years ago. And some in the Navy community can’t quite believe that a media scandal brought down a promising officer.

Honors didn’t lose his career over something he did in his current command. He made his videos — complete with slapsticky sex jokes, machismo, implied nudity and the occasional use of the words “fag” and “fuck” — in 2006 and 2007.

If he did anything to merit not commanding a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, no one in the chain of command believed so before he was put in charge of it, and no one has asserted that his command of the Enterprise has been lackluster. Honors said on camera that his superiors didn’t know about the videos, which seems like a stretch — as in, he’s making sure not to throw anyone under the bus for his juvenile-if-routine humor.

Some in the Navy community are disappointed that the Navy isn’t doing the same when faced with a media firestorm. Several of Honors’ former shipmates have come to his defense on Facebook and in the press. “Every week, he’d poke fun at a different department, but also tell them what a good job they were doing,” Loree Gilman, a former electrician’s mate on the Enterprise, and a viewer of “XO Movie Night,” told National Journal.

Analyst Raymond Pritchett has been a blogging whirlwind since the story broke. He was incredulous that the Navy last night placed Honors on “temporary” suspension, considering it an indication that its public-affairs officers were bound up in a fetal position: “Does anyone else think it is embarrassing how the Navy is running away from the camera during a rare moment when everyone wants to talk about the Navy?”

That’s basically the textbook definition of an environment where women feel harassed (Honors boasted that his favorite “Movie Night” segments were those with “chicks in the shower”) and the Navy evidently doesn’t want to relive any accusations that such environments are tolerated. That’s why it fired Commander Fred Wilhelm from the dock landing ship Guston Hall last year.

Still, it did tolerate the videos, for years, however tacitly. On one of them, Honors bemoans those on the carrier who complained anonymously about their tastelessness. A source of mine claimed yesterday to have seen them years ago, despite not having served on the Enterprise. It’s the public embarrassment that the Navy can’t deal with.

But Graf lost her job because of how she performed in it. Honors lost his because the media found out about what he believed to be a fun diversion from his duties in his old one. Expect the debate to continue long after Honors is gone.